{"id":737,"date":"2025-03-19T00:11:12","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T00:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/03\/19\/trump-releases-classified-files-on-jfk-assassination-heres-what-they-say-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2025-03-19T00:11:12","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T00:11:12","slug":"trump-releases-classified-files-on-jfk-assassination-heres-what-they-say-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/03\/19\/trump-releases-classified-files-on-jfk-assassination-heres-what-they-say-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump releases classified files on JFK assassination. Here’s what they say. – USA TODAY"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

WASHINGTON \u2015\u00a0President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s administration on Tuesday released what it said were all of the government’s classified files on the 1963\u00a0assassination of President John F. Kennedy<\/a>, making thousands of pages of records available to the public for the first time.<\/p>\n

The release of the files comes after Trump\u00a0signed a day one executive order<\/a>\u00a0in January aimed at fully releasing government documents related to the assassinations of Kennedy, his brother and presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., and civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p>\n

The contents of the documents, and whether any previously unreleased information is in them, wasn’t immediately clear. USA TODAY will continue reviewing the files and updating this story.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis could be a joke of a release, or it could be a breakthrough. \u00a0We just won\u2019t know until we have time to process them,\u201d said Jefferson Morley, author of the JFK Facts newsletter and three books on the CIA that portray the agency\u2019s involvement in the events leading up to the assassination.<\/p>\n

The documents are not expected to change the long-held findings that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.<\/p>\n

<\/a> Some JFK documents touch on Lee Harvey Oswald theories<\/h2>\n

Some of the documents also include references to various conspiracy theories<\/a> suggesting that Oswald left the Soviet Union in 1962 intent on assassinating the popular young president.<\/p>\n

Department of Defense documents from 1963 covered the Cold War of the early 1960s and the U.S. involvement in Latin America, trying to thwart Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s support of communist forces in other countries.<\/p>\n

The documents suggest that Castro would not go so far as to provoke a war with the United States or escalate to the point “that would seriously and immediately endanger the Castro regime.”<\/p>\n

“It appears more likely that Castro might intensify his support of subversive forces in Latin America,” the document reads.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Reuters<\/em><\/p>\n

Part of Trump\u2019s promise of \u2018maximum transparency\u2019 at the nation\u2019s intelligence agencies<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Trump himself did not immediately post about the document release. But Tulsi Gabbard, Trump\u2019s director of National Intelligence, hailed their release, saying it was part of Trump\u2019s promise for \u201cmaximum transparency and a commitment to rebuild the trust of the American people in the Intelligence Community (IC) and federal agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics have long accused the intelligence community, and CIA in particular, of withholding potentially revelatory information about the case. Still, intelligence officials over the years have insisted that they have released everything important and that what\u2019s left was withheld only to protect highly classified sources and methods of gathering intelligence and protecting sources.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Gabbard said that she immediately sent out a directive across the intelligence community after Trump\u2019s Monday announcement ordering everyone to provide all unredacted records within the collection of documents about Kennedy’s assassination the national archives for immediate release.<\/p>\n

JFK file experts said those documents almost certainly have all been made public and viewed already, but with mostly minor redactions.<\/p>\n

<\/a> Not all documents posted online Tuesday night<\/h2>\n

The documents<\/a> were released just before 7 p.m.<\/p>\n

The National Archives and Records Administration, the keeper of the documents, posted them with this statement:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn accordance with President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s directive of March 17, 2025, all records previously withheld for classification\u00a0that are part of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection are released.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National Archives said it partnered with agencies across the federal government to comply with the President\u2019s directive in support of\u00a0Executive Order 14176<\/a>.\u00a0It said the records are available to access either online or in person, via hard copy or on analog media formats,\u00a0at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the records continue to be digitized, they will be posted to this page,\u201d the National Archives said, suggesting that not all of the documents were being released on Tuesday in digital form.<\/p>\n

The National Archives also said some information might still be withheld under court seal or for grand jury secrecy, and because some tax return information is subject to Internal Revenue Code prohibitions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘People have been waiting for decades for this’<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The digital document dump came one day after Trump announced the files would be released during a visit to the \u00a0John F. Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts<\/a>, which he’s taken over as board chairman.<\/p>\n

“People have been waiting for decades for this,”\u00a0Trump<\/a>\u00a0told reporters.<\/p>\n

“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,\u201d Trump added. \u201cI don’t believe we’re going to redact anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation, which were involved in JFK assassination investigations and in the document release, had no immediate comment.<\/p>\n

A mad Justice Department scramble to meet Trump\u2019s deadline<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Trump\u2019s order reportedly set off a scramble within the Justice Department\u2019s National Security Division to meet Trump’s deadline, according to ABC News and Reuters.<\/p>\n

In an email just before 5 p.m. ET Monday, a senior official within DOJ’s Office of Intelligence said that even though the FBI had already conducted “an initial declassification review” of the documents, “all” of the attorneys in the operations section now had to provide “a second set of eyes” to help with this “urgent NSD-wide project.,\u201d ABC News reported<\/a> Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The process of releasing the files was set in motion on Trump\u2019s first day in office on Jan. 20, when he signed an executive order<\/a>\u00a0aimed at fully releasing all government documents related to the assassinations of Kennedy, his brother and presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., and civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p>\n

A new FBI tranche of 2,400 JFK records<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Last month, the FBI said it found some 2,400 new records<\/a> linked to Kennedy’s assassination as well.<\/p>\n

The agency said it was in the process of passing the documents to the National Archives and Records Administration. It’s unclear what revelations, if any, are contained in the newly discovered files.<\/p>\n

Kennedy\u2019s assassination has long been the subject of conspiracies after Oswald, the Marine veteran identified as Kennedy’s assassin, was shot and killed days later.<\/p>\n

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, has called for release of the files to see if any U.S. officials were involved in the assassination or potential coverup. Several U.S. investigations had found no such evidence.<\/p>\n

While\u00a0millions<\/a>\u00a0of government records related to the Kennedy assassination have been previously released, some information remains classified and redacted.\u00a0Trump said he instructed his director of national intelligence,\u00a0Tulsi Gabbard<\/a>, to oversee the release of the remaining files.<\/p>\n

A federal law passed in 1992 required the Kennedy assassination records to be fully released by Oct. 26, 2017 unless the president at the time determined their release would cause “identifiable harm” to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations of such gravity that it “outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”<\/p>\n

Trump was president when the 2017 deadline arrived. He ordered the release of nearly 2,900 records,\u00a0but kept others secret<\/a>\u00a0because of concerns by the CIA and FBI that their release could hurt national security.<\/p>\n

Former\u00a0President Joe Biden<\/a>\u00a0acted in 2021, 2022 and 2023 to give agencies more time to review the records.<\/p>\n

The documents released in 2017 included details on the FBI and CIA investigations into Oswald and information on covert Cold War operations.<\/p>\n

Josh Meyer is USA TODAY’s Domestic Security Correspondent. You can reach him by email at jmeyer@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @JoshMeyerDC and Bluesky at @joshmeyerdc.bsky.social.<\/em><\/p>\n

Contributing: Ed Brackett, Joey Garrison<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2015\u00a0President Donald Trump\u2019s administration on Tuesday released what it said were all of the government’s classified files on the 1963\u00a0assassination of President John F. Kennedy, making thousands of pages of records available to the public for the first time. The release of the files comes after Trump\u00a0signed a day one executive order\u00a0in January aimed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}